As time goes by I assume that we are going to need to be able to post in the Greek alphabet here; I already have posted two queries that have included transcribed Greek words. Are we going to be able to include Greek characters? Unicode? Or someother method?<br />I have SPIonic and Antioch on my machine.<br />The other alternative is to agree on a transliteration scheme.<br /><br />Any thoughts or ideas?<br /><br />yours,<br />Paul McK

I don't know if YaBB (the software that runs this forum) can handle unicode. I wonder if it handles character entities...<br /><br />&#964;&#949;&#952;&#957;&#945;&#8055;&#951;&#957;, &#8005;&#964;&#949; &#956;&#959;&#953; &#956;&#951;&#954;&#8051;&#964;&#953; &#964;&#945;&#8166;&#964;&#945; &#956;&#8051;&#955;&#959;&#953;<br /><br />That stuff above ought to be Mimnermus.<br /><br />In any case, for simple stuff the best thing to use is Betacode. It's ugly as sin, but it's standard now. Most classicists can read it readily if the classics mailing lists is any indication.<br /><br />http://www.stoa.org/sol/betapal.shtml<br /><br />--<br />wm<br /><br />--<br />wm

Here is a system I devised a long time ago to write Greek via email and on chat: It's not perfect, but I think it's much more fun than some of that other stuff I was trying to read, and because it lets you play the elitist in Greek chat rooms. And so I propose it here. The internet friendly Greek Alphabet with Latin keyboard:<br /><br />Alpha -------------> a<br />Beta -------------> b or ß or B<br />Gamma-----------> g<br />Delta -------------> d<br />Epsilon -------------> e<br />Zeta -------------> z<br />Hta --------------> h<br />8eta -------------> 8<br />Iota -------------> i<br />Kappa-------------> k<br />Lambda-----------> l<br />Mu -------------> m<br />Nu -------------> v<br />3i -------------> 3<br />Omikpov ---------> o<br />Pi ------------> p or does this work <pi> ?<br />Ro -------------> p (but use "r" if there if letter "pi" is near and <pi> <br /> does not work)<br />Sigma -------------> c<br />Tau -------------> t<br />Ypsilov -------------> y or u<br />Phi -------------> ph (unless somebody can think of something <br /> better here. It's not really a fricative, but <br /> maybe the symbol "f" is a better way to go to <br /> avoid confusion with Ro, Pi, and Eta.)<br />Xi -------------> x<br />Psi -------------> ps also awaiting a more creative solution<br />?mega-------------> w did the capital work = ?<br /><br />I'm not sure whether these will come out as rough/smooth breathings but I'll give it a try to see what happens.<br /><br />rough -------------> ’ smooth -------------> ‘<br /><br />what do you think so far? Any ideas to improve this?<br /><br />yours,<br /><br />J. Sebastian Pagani<br />

<br /><br />you get this:<br /><br />ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ<br /><br />which should look like Greek with some of the archaic letters (fau and koppa) thrown in for good measure, if you have SPIonic installed on your machine.<br /><br />Perhaps a moderator should choose a font that 1) looks good 2) handles all the little squiggly marks (accents, breathing marks, etc.) and 3) is available on many computer platforms, and declare that the conventional font for this board? That way, we can all communicate more easily without having to load a dozen different Greek fonts on our machines.<br />

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

[quote author=Lex link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#254 date=1051211846]<br />Perhaps a moderator should choose a font that 1) looks good 2) handles all the little squiggly marks (accents, breathing marks, etc.) and 3) is available on many computer platforms, and declare that the conventional font for this board? <br />[/quote]<br /><br />There is no such thing that meets all 3 criteria. To my regular pain. I'm not aware of a single one that even meets point #3 which is the most important. <br /><br />That's the giant headache in doing classical Greek on the internet.<br />

well if you want greek characters you must change charset <br /><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-7"><br />or <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1253"><br />or <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=x-mac-greek"><br /><br />--------<br />If we want to read or write ancient Greek we usually use the font "Athena" who is "polutoniko"(I don't know english word)<br />-------<br />I just see at the YabbSE page the pack of greek language but I don't know if you can use it because all its in Greek ( if you try this you must change charset from template)<br /><br />I hope that i help you little<br />

[quote author=William Annis link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#255 date=1051217145]<br />[quote author=Lex link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#254 date=1051211846]<br />Perhaps a moderator should choose a font that 1) looks good 2) handles all the little squiggly marks (accents, breathing marks, etc.) and 3) is available on many computer platforms, and declare that the conventional font for this board? <br />[/quote]<br /><br />There is no such thing that meets all 3 criteria. To my regular pain. I'm not aware of a single one that even meets point #3 which is the most important. <br />[/quote]<br /><br />Hmmmm.... darn. Yes, you're right, without cross-platform capability, a font is no good here. Well, it was just a thought. <br /><br />BetaCode is ASCII so it doesn't have that problem, but it's just too darn ugly, and not terribly mnemonic, either. <br /><br />I think J. Sebastian is probably onto a better scheme, but I think it might be easier to use an English-like phonetic spelling instead of trying to recreate Greek letters (e.g. 'th' instead of '8' for theta). (Of course, this might alienate those who aren't native speakers of English.)<br /><br />Something like this seems relatively unambiguous to me, although there may be a lot I'm missing, since I'm new at this:<br /><br />me-^nin a'eide thea` Pe-le-i:a'deo- Akhile-^os<br />oulome'ne-n he` muri" Akhaioi^s a'lge' e'the-ke,<br />polla`s d' iphthi'mous psukha`s Ai:di pro:'apsen<br />he-ro-'o-n, autou`s de` helo-'ria teu^khe ku'nessin<br />oio-noi^si' te pa^si, Dio`s d' etelei'eto boule-',<br />eks hou^ de-` ta` pro^ta diaste-'te-n eri'sante<br />Atrei:'de-s te a'naks andro-^n kai` di^os Akhilleu's.<br /><br />This is the first few line of the Illiad, obviously, taken from Perseus. The '-' indicates a long vowel, so 'e-' is an eta, the 'o-' an omega. The accents always come after the vowel in question, unlike in proper Greek where they come before majuscules. The ^ is a circumflex, the : is a sideways diaresis, the ' is an acute or apostrophe for elision, the ` is grave, the " is an acute followed by elision (looks better than two single quotes). I used 'h' as in 'he`' to indicate rough breathing, 'kh' for chi, 'ks' for xi (I think that using 'x' could be confusing; is it to be associated visually with chi or by the sound of its English name with the sound of xi?), 'th' for theta and 'ps' for psi. 'Z' could be used for zeta.<br /><br />Perhaps this can be tweaked some, and I'm certain I missed something and made a mistake or five in my first pass. Suggestions, anyone?

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

ai)ai ai)ai<br /><br />qrhnw= ai)ei'...<br /><br /><br />For a stressful moment, do a google search on "representing greek in ascii." Pay special attention to mailing lists.<br /><br />Unfortunately, everyone who comes to greek, then tries to use a computer outside of greece, comes up with some scheme for representing polytonic greek in ascii. I've had to deal with this with mailing lists, my greek poetry website, here... I'm sure it'll keep coming up.<br /><br />I know and agree completely that betacode is ugly. But it is understood by computers. That means if some day Jeff comes up with a nice way to represent Greek, it'll be easy to convert automatically existing pages and fora. (I know of programs in Java, Javascript, Python and Perl which understand Betacode and convert to and from various other representations.)<br /><br />The best non-betacode system I've seen uses 'h' for all asperation, ignores accents and uses a colon (: - standard symbol for this) for long vowels. Thus:<br /><br />

<br /><br />This system was used by some American classics journals before typesetting in Greek became (comparatively) easier. I describe it full here: http://www.aoidoi.org/articles/ascii.php. <br /><br />I'm going to object strongly to any ascii system that represents greek with non-phonetic matches (v for nu, for example) unless it is betacode, which there is no reason to replace. It is used widely, and knowing it will give you access to most professional internet classics communication. This is why I object to Sebastian's system laid out above.<br /><br />Let me say again: Betacode is ugly. I know that. I feel your pain. I resisted it strongly myself for a long time. But for all its ugliness, it works and it works well.<br /><br />--<br />wm

Lex, I had absolutely no problem reading this. But I still don't know how useful a test this is because I knew and recognized these lines from the start. I don't think I'll have a problem with any system we adopt, just as long as it doesn't end up being full of question marks and other meaningless garbled junk on my screen. <br /><br />William: yeah, the ugliness of the ascii (is that what it was called?) is unfortunate, but is it the case that once Jeff makes Textkit able to handle it that it would look like real Greek, accents and all, when messages are posted? if that's the case, you will win me over to your side. But who cares what we use until Textkit becomes compatible with that code?<br /><br />To me, I can read these examples with equal facility:<br /><br />(1) provided by Lex:<br /><br />me-^nin a'eide thea` Pe-le-i:a'deo- Akhile-^os<br />oulome'ne-n <br /><br />(2) provided by William:<br /><br />me:nin aeide thea, Pe:le:iada:' Akhile:os<br />oulomene:n, ktl.<br /><br />(3) by myself:<br /><br />mhviv aeide 8ea, Phlhiadew Axilhos<br />oulomevhv....<br /><br />but I find it most comfortable to write the third. What about writing however each finds easiest, until Jeff makes the (betacode?) a possibility?

[quote author=Elucubrator link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#264 date=1051232823]<br />. But who cares what we use until Textkit becomes compatible with that code?<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Because the way these BB systems work, it might work retroactively. Or could be made to.<br /><br />

<br />What about writing however each finds easiest, until Jeff makes the (betacode?) a possibility?<br />

<br /><br />Confusing! I may have studied Chinese for many years, but I'm not sure I can cram another Greek ascii encoding scheme into my brain. <br /><br />--<br />wm<br />

Well, I don't know what you mean by "it could be retroactive"?<br />But it seems like the best may be to wait until the betacode is in place before trying on-board composition and conversation.<br /><br />funny about the Chinese.

[quote author=William Annis link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#262 date=1051230131]<br />I know and agree completely that betacode is ugly. But it is understood by computers.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />OK, BetaCode it is. I was just trying to make a small contribution to the board, not annoy you by having the same ideas that every other Greek newbie apparently has.<br /><br />[quote author=William Annis link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#262 date=1051230131]<br />That means if some day Jeff comes up with a nice way to represent Greek, it'll be easy to convert automatically existing pages and fora. (I know of programs in Java, Javascript, Python and Perl which understand Betacode and convert to and from various other representations.)<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I'm a programmer myself, so if any script is needed to convert BetaCode to another form, let me know.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

[quote author=Lex link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#274 date=1051281414]<br />I was just trying to make a small contribution to the board, not annoy you by having the same ideas that every other Greek newbie apparently has.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />No, no, not annoyed. I'm just trying to keep us from going through the debate of creating another transcription system when several others already exist. My geeky heritage comes out: reuse, reuse, reuse! A standard, if possible. <br /><br />

<br />I'm a programmer myself, so if any script is needed to convert BetaCode to another form, let me know. <br />

<br /><br />Hmm. I should collect links for all the systems I know to do this.

[quote author=Elucubrator link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#264 date=1051232823]<br />William: yeah, the ugliness of the ascii (is that what it was called?) is unfortunate, but is it the case that once Jeff makes Textkit able to handle it that it would look like real Greek, accents and all, when messages are posted? if that's the case, you will win me over to your side. But who cares what we use until Textkit becomes compatible with that code?<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I've been playing some more with fonts and I now realize that the SPIonic font (sort of) understands Betacode (it doesn't understand the * for majuscules), so TextKit can already (sort of) convert BetaCode to Greek:<br /><br />

<br /><br /><br />mh=nin a)/eide qea\ *phlhi+a/dew *)axilh=os<br />ou)lome/nhn, h(\ muri/' *)axaioi=s a)/lge' e)/qhke,<br />polla\s d' i)fqi/mous yuxa\s *)/ai+di proi/+ayen<br />h(rw/wn, au)tou\s de\ e(lw/ria teu=xe ku/nessin<br />oi)wnoi=si/ te pa=si, *dio\s d' e)telei/eto boulh/,<br />e)c ou(= dh\ ta\ prw=ta diasth/thn e)ri/sante<br />*)atrei/+dhs te a)/nac a)ndrw=n kai\ di=os *)axilleu/s.<br /><br /><br />The second block looks tolerably close to proper Greek on my machine, when I have the SPIonic font installed. When I uninstall the font, the second block just looks like BetaCode. So if you post BetaCode, put it in font tags specifying SPIonic (SGreek and SuperGreek don't work as well, Athenian and Vusillus Old Face Italic (which Antioch uses) not at all). This way, people with SPIonic will get something that looks almost like Greek, and people who don't or can't have SPIonic on their machines will still be able to see raw BetaCode. This seems like a fair compromise, until something better comes along.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

[quote author=Lex link=board=2;threadid=50;start=0#277 date=1051283181]<br />I've been playing some more with fonts and I now realize that the SPIonic font (sort of) understands Betacode (it doesn't understand the * for majuscules), so TextKit can already (sort of) convert BetaCode to Greek:<br />[/quote]<br /><br />kalw=j e)/xei!<br /><br />That's so cool! On my Mac, it's nice greek (small, but readable), and on the Unix machine, betacode.

[quote author=William Annis link=board=2;threadid=50;start=15#285 date=1051306237]<br />kalw=j e)/xei!<br /><br />That's so cool! On my Mac, it's nice greek (small, but readable), and on the Unix machine, betacode. <br />[/quote]<br /><br />And of course size tags can be used to crank up the size of the text if the Greek is too small to be readable:<br /><br />

You computer Geeks! ;D<br /><br />I wish I knew how to do all that stuff. Do you guys know any good book you can recommend to me to start learning what you know. I really don't have much time for it. But something simple that will start me off on learning more about computers and how they work.<br /><br />You guys are going to laugh, but the last computer programme I wrote was in a language called "Basic" in grade school, back when you had to load a programme with a cassette recorder and if you wante to play the cool game, it took about 40 minutes or an hour to load. <br /><br />I have a Mac now. And I got to be pretty good with one of these when I got my first PowerMac, but that was in the days of System 7, and suddenly when I come back to it now, everything is entirely different. Do you think I should get one of those MacSecret books first and learn all the new tricks of my machine.<br /><br />Thanks nerds,<br /><br />Sebastian<br />Computer Geek Wannabe

[quote author=Elucubrator link=board=2;threadid=50;start=15#318 date=1051544793]<br />I have a Mac now. And I got to be pretty good with one of these when I got my first PowerMac, but that was in the days of System 7, and suddenly when I come back to it now, everything is entirely different. Do you think I should get one of those MacSecret books first and learn all the new tricks of my machine.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />I'm afraid I don't know much about Macs, since all "true" nerds use PC compatibles running Linux. The stuff with the fonts and YABB tags I learned by experimentation. It's like Greek, I suppose; you just have to put in the time and have fun with it.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!

I've installed the SPIonic fount on my computer and didn't realise it for a while but today it struck me that on some of the posts I was actually reading Greek, in Greek letters!!! How this works I don't know, but does it mean that if I type with the keystrokes indicated on the "SPIonic fount read me" that the rest of you will be able to see it as Greek text in Greek letters? <br /><br />I'm not exactly sure how all thes YAbbC stuff works either but I'm going to experiment, let me know if I got it right.<br /><br />[face=SPIonic]<br /> Poikilo/qron' a0qa/nat' 'Afro/dita,<br /> pai= Di/oj dolo/ploke, li/ssomai/ se,<br /> mh/ m' a1saisi mh/d' o0ni/aisi da/mna,<br /> po/tnia, qu=mon.<br />[/face]<br /><br />Ok, I think I have it figured out now, except for the fact that I had to produce the smooth breathing before the "A" in [face=SPIonic] 'Afro/dita [/face] with the "single quote" key that is used to mark an elision. None of the codes for Smooth breathing, i.e. "0" or ")", placed either before or after the "A" gave me the right position for the breathing.<br /><br />What am I doing wrong? Or do you guys just use the "single quote" here as well?<br /><br /><br />-S.<br /><br />PD. Size was 3, Font was Spionic, and with its veil torn off here is the beast exposed:<br /><br /> Poikilo/qron' a0qa/nat' 'Afro/dita,<br /> pai= Di/oj dolo/ploke, li/ssomai/ se,<br /> mh/ m' a1saisi mh/d' o0ni/aisi da/mna,<br /> po/tnia, qu=mon.<br /><br />PPD If you are seing the same above as you are below, you need to go to the following page and download the SPIonic font, it's available there for both Macintosh machines and IBM compatibles. There is a "read me" file as well which shows you the right keystrokes for the Greek to come out.<br /><br /> http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/fonts/

[quote author=Elucubrator link=board=2;threadid=50;start=15#409 date=1052270732]<br />I think that for working all that out on my own I now deserve the yellow belt of Geekhood! ;D<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Ah, but only when you can grab the web page from my hand will you be a true Master, young grasshopper!<br /><br />The breathing mark/capital letter can also be done using a "non-breaking space" followed by the mark, which can be typed using a '7)' like so:<br /><br />

[quote author=Lex link=board=2;threadid=50;start=15#481 date=1052758932]<br /><br />I didn't think of mentioning it before, but we might want to stick to pure unadulterated BetaCode, even if it doesn't look quite as good with the SPIonic font. That way, when William converts the whole site from BetaCode to something else, his magic wand won't choke on our pseudo-BetaCode.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />Actually, if such a conversion took place, it would be at Jeff's hands. Even so, both Jeff and I are perfectly capable of programming around the curiosities of SPIonic's understanding of Betacode.<br /><br />I admit to a strong predjudice, though. If I have to look at e)s where we should expect e)j my brain starts to itch a bit. In the bad way.<br /><br />

<br />BTW, "li/ssomai/" with two acute accents in the word; is that a mistake? Or just a subtlety of Greek accentuation that I don't understand yet?<br />

<br /><br />The latter. Look up "enclitics" in your grammar or textbook. There is a small class of very popular little words which have no accent of their own. They make up for this lack by taking part in the accentuation of the previous word, resulting in what is effectively a slightly longer word. Sometimes this changes nothing. In this case li/ssomaise ("I entreat you") breaks Greek's accent rules: you have to have an accent on one of the last three syllables. So, the word gets another accent for se to hang from: li/ssomai/ se.<br /><br />In a phrase like "a certain woman", though, gunh/ tij there's already an accent close enough for tij to hang from.<br /><br />Once the circumflex accent is involved, it gets tricky. Actually, it makes an intuitive sense once you look at it for a while. It's just difficult to explain well.<br /><br />[face=SPIonic]eu)tuxei=te[/face] (note: I've remembered this verb is contract, finally, thanks to Sebastian )

[quote author=William Annis link=board=2;threadid=50;start=15#482 date=1052773182]<br />Actually, if such a conversion took place, it would be at Jeff's hands. Even so, both Jeff and I are perfectly capable of programming around the curiosities of SPIonic's understanding of Betacode.<br />[/quote]<br /><br />So the SPIonic dialect of BetaCode is acceptable? If so, sweet!<br /><br />[quote author=William Annis link=board=2;threadid=50;start=15#482 date=1052773182]<br />

<br />BTW, "li/ssomai/" with two acute accents in the word; is that a mistake? Or just a subtlety of Greek accentuation that I don't understand yet?<br />

<br />The latter.[/quote]<br /><br />Ack. It's going to take me a while to get the accents down.

I, Lex Llama, super genius, will one day rule this planet! And then you'll rue the day you messed with me, you damned dirty apes!